What’s In Your Drinking Water? | Effing Love Science

Want to read something that at first is seemingly disturbing but upon reflection is probably still a little disturbing? Why wouldn’t you. Here goes: that water coming out of your tab, it’s filled with medication. Over time you’ll be exposed to dozens of them.

In the 1970’s, several studies turned up pharmaceuticals in treated U.S. sewage water, and drugs have been a known unknown in water supplies ever since. Recently, researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency tested 50 U.S. wastewater-treatment plants serving more than 46 million people for 58 common drugs. They found many of them (as shown above), but at concentrations that would take years to drink a full dose.